


Changeling

by Cryptoad



Series: His Dark Knight’s Materials [2]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU (Comics), Under the Red Hood
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Blood and Injury, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Past Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-24
Updated: 2019-01-24
Packaged: 2019-10-15 17:44:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17533322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cryptoad/pseuds/Cryptoad
Summary: “Let him go Araceli,” Effy tries again, sounding desperate in a way that makes Dick’s skin crawl. The vulture daemon regards her coldly, before turning that ugly head in Dick’s direction. Her eyes meet his. Another awful shock goes through him. Being the focus of someone else’s daemon is never comfortable, but there’s something inhuman in those eyes.Dick can’t look away.“Dick never thought he’d see his brother again, especially not like this. It goes about as well as you’d expect.





	Changeling

**Author's Note:**

> More self indulgence :)

It takes a lot to make Dick uncomfortable. He hasn’t exactly lived a sheltered life, even before he had put the Robin costume on. And being a vigilante pretty much desensitises him to everything else. Hell, just living in Gotham desensitises you to a lot of shit - even the Joker’s lack of daemon, though creepy, feels almost routine.

But even all of that doesn’t prepare him for the sight of Jason - his _brother_ \- bloody and bruised but very much alive. 

Jason’s skin is almost the same colour as the sheets pulled up to his neck - a sickly white - except where it’s splashed with red. Through a thick layer of grime, Dick can see a curious streak of white in his brother’s dark hair. He’s filled out as well, thick muscles curving the sheet more than Dick would expect. But it’s Jason. It’s _Jason_.

Danior pinches him, sharp little nails digging painfully into Dick’s cheek. It doesn’t wake him up. When he blinks, Jason is still laid out in front of him.

“B, what-“ he can’t even finish. It feels as though something is trying to claw its way out of his chest. He can’t get any words out around the obstruction.

Bruce hasn’t changed out of the Batman costume. He’s covered in dust and blood that Dick guesses is Jason’s rather than his own. Effy isn’t in her pod anymore though, a dark brown smudge against the white sheets, and she twitches at the sound of Dick’s voice, wings fluttering.

“What the hell?” Danior finishes for him. Bruce turns and Dick’s eyes flicker over his face, the cowl pulled back and hanging limply from his neck. But Danior keeps his eyes on Jason, springing off of Dick’s shoulder and moving towards the bed with single-minded focus.

Dick wishes he had stayed. Wants to thread his fingers through his daemon’s fur and press him close. That’s _Jason_.

As their eyes meet, Bruce’s face contracts in - pain? anger? fear? - and for a moment Dick is surprised by the obvious display of emotion on the vigilante’s face. Maybe he had been wrong to assume that the blood was all Jason’s. Maybe Bruce is hurt.

Before Dick can even open his mouth to ask, something dark and huge explodes out of the covers on the bed and knocks Danior to the floor.

An electric shock of fear frissions through Dick’s entire body. Danior shrieks, high and shrill. The creature - Dick isn’t even entirely sure what it is - pins his daemon to the floor, wicked talons curving threateningly over him, beak hovering just inches from his throat. At the same time Jason’s eyes snap open, wide and white in his blood-spattered face.

“Dani!” Dick cries, lurching towards his daemon without even thinking. Those talons - they look deadly, perfectly capable of puncturing through Danior’s body. Dick imagines they could go the whole way through and come out the other side.

“Araceli!” Effy says at the exact same moment. As always, the words are strangely commanding for such a small daemon. The creature’s head comes up and Dick feels another awful shock. Araceli? But that can’t -

That can’t-

Araceli is small. Brown. Not particularly attractive, but sweet in her own way. Dick remembers her high, clear voice, the way she had chirruped whenever she was excited, her short, sharp beak that she had used to tug at Danior’s fur when she had wanted him to pay attention to her. Araceli had been - cute. And then she had been nothing, just a puff of bright, golden dust.

This thing isn’t Araceli.

This thing is huge, dark, ugly. A wicked beak and long, sharp claws. A bald red head that looks too much like flesh and blank, reptilian eyes.

It snarls - it’s voice is somehow deeper than Dick had expected - and it’s talons don’t loosen their hold on Danior.

“Jason!” Bruce is saying, leaning over the bed, clutching at Jason’s shoulders. Jason is fighting him. Snarling. Swearing. Sounding somehow exactly like the brother Dick used to know, and somehow utterly different. If this turns out to be some alternate-reality Jason transplanted into the aching gap left by their own, well, Dick won’t be surprised.

Danior squeals as the talons tighten.

“Let him go Araceli,” Effy tries again, sounding desperate in a way that makes Dick’s skin crawl. The vulture daemon regards her coldly, before turning that ugly head in Dick’s direction. Her eyes meet his. Another awful shock goes through him. Being the focus of someone else’s daemon is never comfortable, but there’s something inhuman in those eyes.

Dick can’t look away.

Slowly, one by one, those talons peel away. Danior streaks towards Dick as soon as he’s free and Dick catches him up and clutches him close to his chest. Danior’s own chest is heaving, little heart beating fast fast fast.

Jason goes limp against the bed. Dick still wants to go to him, wants to catch his face between his hands and just _look_ , but that daemon is still sitting, huge, in the space between them.

Dick flees.

 

***

 

“Is it really him?” Tim asks, eyes wide and round in his head.

Tim had hero-worshipped Jason, Dick remembers with an uncomfortable sort of sinking sensation in his chest. That was the reason he had even come to Bruce - because of the years he had spent watching Jason, loving him, wishing he could be him.

Dick thinks of the Jason he had just seen - the pale, bloodied figure on the bed, that ugly, unfamiliar daemon - and wonders if Tim would still love him now.

“I’m not sure,” Dick says, and is surprised to find that it’s true. He doubts that Bruce would bring someone who wasn’t Jason back to the cave - someone dangerous - but in their lives there are a thousand possibilities that they can’t discount.

Demetria droops against Tim’s shoulder, but the kid’s own enthusiasm doesn’t dim.

“Can I see him?”

Dick shakes his head. Whether the Jason in the cave is real or not, it’s definitely not a good idea to spring Tim on him so early. Dick remembers his own shock, his anger, when he had seen Jason in his costume. Somehow he doubts Jason will take it any better.

“No,” he says. “Stay in the tower.”

Tim pouts.

“Don’t pout. B didn’t even want me to tell you but-“ he bites his lip. Tim perks up immediately, eyes going bright and sharp and Demetria shifts her weight and leans in to murmur something into his ear. “I think you should know.”

Even through the screen Dick can see understanding shift in Tim’s eyes. The wide-eyed wonder morphs into something more serious. Dick doesn’t particularly like the fact that Tim can accept that he might be in danger so readily but there’s not much he can do about it now. Being in danger is an unfortunate reality of the job.

“I understand,” Tim says.

Dick isn’t entirely sure he does - not really - but he nods anyway. Signs off with a, “be safe,” and hopes that none of this will even be necessary.

 

***

 

Of course, even Batman can’t keep Jason at the Batcave for long.

It’s not exactly unexpected, when he disappears. Jason has always been a bit of an escape artist, always been good at disappearing into the shadows, even in the bright Robin costume. And he’s clearly had his own agenda since miraculously returning from the dead. One that doesn’t quite fit with Bruce’s own.

For a little while he stays under the radar - a few days of nothingness. There are rumours starting, amongst the seedier members of Gotham, that Red Hood was killed in that explosion.

Then Jason breaks into the Titan’s tower and attacks Tim and Dick has never been so disappointed to be right.

Bruce brings Tim back to the batcave. There are bruises on Tim’s face, bright purple and blue, and there’s a cut on his lip that’s bleeding sluggishly down his chin. He’s wearing his Robin costume and there’s a jagged hole in the chest where the logo should be. Tim is awake when Bruce helps him limp into the cave, one arm tucked up carefully against his chest, the other cradling Demetria, who looks limp and grey but otherwise unhurt. He hadn’t been conscious, Bruce tells him, when he had arrived at the Tower. But he’s alive. That’s what matters. Tim is alive.

Dick doesn’t like that he’s relieved about that. Doesn’t like the fact that somewhere inside, some part of him thinks Jason might be capable of killing a kid like Tim.

But Jason isn’t the same person. That monstrous daemon should have told him that. He’s been cutting a swathe of destruction through Gotham for long before Bruce had realised his true identity. Killing and maiming and ruling through fear. But even as the Red Hood, Jason doesn’t hurt kids. Dick doesn’t think that even death could take that away from him. Maybe Tim is just a special exception.

“I’m sorry,” Tim says, as Dick leans close to inspect his face. Alfred’s already mostly patched him up. There isn’t much they can do, though, for the bruises, except wait for them to fade. “You warned me to be careful and-“

“It’s not your fault Tim.”

Tim crosses his arms, wincing when he presses against a sore spot on his side. “He won the fight,” he says, sullen. 

From what Dick had heard it hadn’t really been a fight. Once Araceli had Demetria in those talons there wasn’t much that Tim could have done.

Demetria catches Dick’s gaze, for a second, with those round, wet eyes of hers, and looks away quickly. 

“It wasn’t your fault either Demetria,” Dick adds, just incase. She gurgles unhappily but let’s Danior stroke a little black hand down her back without protest.

“And you’re still young Tim. You can’t win every fight.”

“But I’m Robin,” Tim protests. The bruises on his face make him look, somehow, startlingly young. “I should have won.”

Being Robin didn’t help Jason when the Joker took him, Dick thinks. Didn’t stop him from losing, from bruising and bleeding and _dying_. It’s never helped Dick either.

Dick carefully doesn’t voice those thoughts. Despite what people think, he knows when to keep his mouth shut.

“You can’t win every fight,” Danior repeats.

Demetria shifts beneath Danior’s hand, turns those bulbous eyes on Danior, and then on Dick. Her throat works, moving in that strange, rippling way that Dick’s never quite gotten used to.

“But we should,” she croaks.

Dick doesn’t have an answer to that.

 

***

 

It’s strange, and not particularly pleasant, sitting beside this new Jason on one of Gotham’s many rooftops. In the hazy orange darkness Jason looks oddly sinister. His shoulders seem too wide, his silhouette too thick. That faceless red mask is clamped firmly over his head. Even with Araceli perched between them - especially with Araceli perched between them - Dick can almost pretend that he’s somebody else. Somebody different.

“I can send her away if you’re gonna be weird about her,” Jason says abruptly.

Dick considers. Honestly, he isn’t sure if that would be better or worse. If Jason’s new daemon, or the idea of him without one, is more scary.

“Why did you do it?” He asks, instead of answering. “If you’re angry at us, that’s fair, but Tim’s just a kid.”

“Exactly!”

The force of Jason’s reply takes Dick by surprise and he tenses, remembering those ugly bruises on Tim’s face, the torn up hole on his chest where the Robin logo should have been. Danior’s tail curls around the back of Dick’s neck, brushes his cheek as the daemon goes tense too. Jason still isn’t looking at him, but he presses something up beneath his jaw and the mask releases with a hiss, revealing his face, so similar and yet not the same.

An odd little lump forms in Dick’s throat.

“After-“ Jason takes a breath, scowls. Araceli is silent by his side. “After what happened to me I thought-“

He stops again. Dick doesn’t know what to say. How to make this, any of this OK again.

“Listen,” and Jason’s voice has dropped to an odd sort of growl. “The kid is good - I’ll give him that. But he’s a kid. I managed to get to him. There are others who won’t stop at just knocking him out.”

Dick understands - really, he does. When Tim had first put on the Robin costume, Dick had been breathless with the same righteous anger. How could Bruce expose another kid to the danger that being Robin posed? The danger that had gotten Dick hurt so many times? The danger that had gotten Jason killed?

But Jason hadn’t been there. He hadn’t seen the state that Bruce had sunk to following Jason’s death. He hadn’t seen how Tim had dragged Bruce, relentlessly, out of that hole.

“I get it,” Dick starts. “Really-“

“Do you?”

It’s Araceli that speaks and Dick is surprised again by the deep rumble of her voice. Danior’s hands flex, sharp little nails digging into his shoulder, even through the material of his suit.

“Someone else would have killed him,” Jason says, and there’s something dangerous about his voice. Something dark and ugly. It makes Dick wonder, with a sort of sick curiosity, if Jason had been planning to kill Tim himself. Maybe he just hadn’t been able to go through with it.

“You don’t know him. Tim’s a smart kid,” Dick says and doesn’t say _smarter than you._ What happened to Jason wasn’t his fault. Dick understands where he’s coming from - being the smartest kid in the world isn’t going to stop some psycho from beating you to death with a crowbar. But that isn’t going to happen to Tim.

Jason snorts. “I’m sure he is,” he mutters.

The sun is starting to rise. The orange glow that seems a permanent part of the Gotham sky is getting stronger. It shines off the helmet where it rests on the roof between them. It’s gleams in the oil on Araceli’s feathers. For a wild, breathless moment Dick is tempted to reach out and touch her.

The sensation passes quickly but Dick buries his fingers tightly in Danior’s fur anyway - just incase.

“Look,” Dick starts and is surprised that his voice shakes. “Tim isn’t going to stop being Robin so-“

Jason stands abruptly and Dick startles so badly that he nearly pitches himself off the roof. Even worse - Danior lets out a little squeal. Then, when Jason bends to retrieve his helmet he can’t help flinching.

Jason looks at Dick so coldly, that for a moment he can’t breathe.

“Best keep him out of my way then,” he snaps, before fitting the helmet back over his face.

Dick scrambles to his feet but Jason is already gone, disappearing over the side of the building before Dick can even call his name.

Then it’s just Araceli. It makes Dick’s stomach lurch, seeing her sitting there alone, even knowing that Jason isn’t so far away. She fixes him with that blank-eyed stare. That odd desire to touch her feels suddenly so far away that Dick can’t believe it ever existed.

“It was nice to see you Dick,” she says in that deep, rumbling voice.

Dick has absolutely no idea what to say to that.

**Author's Note:**

> Again the names are mostly because I like them.
> 
> Tim - Demetria, a Greek name meaning follower of Demeter who was the Goddess of harvest. She’s a Cuban tree frog.
> 
> See my first fic for the other daemons.
> 
> I hope you enjoyed! :)


End file.
